Ryan Lawler

Ryan Lawler serves as a Venture Partner at 500 Startups, where he invests in early-stage startups. Previously he worked as a journalist covering technology and business for publications such as TechCrunch, GigaOM, and Light Reading.

Latest from Ryan Lawler

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the cannabis industry will soon become a huge market opportunity for startup entrepreneurs who have the brains and the gumption to navigate a still-murky legal and regulatory environment. And what happens when huge market opportunities open up? Well, venture money is sure to follow. Read More

Kong is an app for iOS and Android that is a big departure from its previous offerings. The new app, being launched today, is designed to create a new type of social interaction built around sharing short, looping GIFs of your face. Read More

Duo Security, the two-factor authentication startup backed by Benchmark and Google Ventures, wants to do more to help protect companies from hackers trying to gain access to their networks. With that goal in mind, it’s launching a new product to secure their networks and announcing $30 million in new funding led by Redpoint Ventures. Read More

There’s an Uber for everything nowadays, so why not an Uber for weed?
Eaze, a startup that enables medical marijuana patients to order cannabis products online and have those goodies delivered to their homes, today is announcing $10 million in Series A round funding led by DCM Ventures with participation from Fresh VC, 500 Startups, Snoop Dogg’s Casa Verde Ventures, and other… Read More

Instacart, the on-demand grocery delivery startup that is reportedly valued north of $2 billion, is growing fast in 15 markets throughout the country. As it seeks to meet that demand, the company has begun experimenting with outsourcing deliveries through third-party companies, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. Read More

Today we’re pleased to announce that Chris Dixon, a venture capitalist at Andreessen Horowitz, will be joining us at Disrupt NY. This is great news, and let me tell you why.
Usually venture capitalists are pretty boring. They generally wear khakis while on the hunt for whatever the next Uber-for-X or Airbnb-for-Y will be. They know what all the hot new messaging apps are, and have… Read More

Thanks to its recent acquisition of San Francisco-based food delivery startup Fastbite, Square is adding a whole new option to Caviar that will reduce the cost of meals and time customers spend waiting for them to be delivered. By doing so, it will compete more directly with local food delivery services like Sprig and Spoonrocket. Read More

It’s rare that a company can hire 600 employees, raise $450 million in funding, reach $100 million in annual sales, and still say it’s in stealth mode. But Domo, the brainchild of Omniture co-founder Josh James, is no ordinary startup.
The company, which was founded nearly five years ago, has quietly built a platform for collecting, normalizing and visualizing business… Read More

RealtyShares has taken the idea of crowdfunding and applied it to the real estate market. After about a year of operations in which it was able to show product-market fit, the company has raised $10 million in funding from Menlo Ventures to quickly grow the number of projects made available to investors. Read More

It’s high time the cannabis industry got some attention from investors. So it’s a good thing that Privateer Holdings, a company focusing on producing, distributing, and educating consumers about legal marijuana, has closed on a $75 million round of funding it will use to create new brands of cannabis products. Read More

Over the past few years, we have seen a ton of new electric bikes hit the market. They range from the high-end to the low-end, but most tend to be priced around $2,500. Not long ago, I got a chance to try out the Karmic Koben, a new electronic bike that will be in production soon and priced at a good deal less than that. Read More

Cribspot creating the most comprehensive search engine for apartments on or near university campuses. It’s doing that by collecting rental information from thousands of different sources and working directly with landlords who don’t have websites or other ways to find out about their apartments. Read More

Welcome back to our temporary CrunchWeek set as we rebuild Video Land here at TCHQ. This week Sarah Lane, Ryan Lawler and myself dug into the week’s most important topics: Facebook’s work to bring user-to-user payments to Messenger, the inside scoop on how fast Lyft is growing, and what was the big new thing at this year’s SXSW festival. Read More

Five years ago, Dave McClure decided to strike out on his own and start a little venture firm called 500 Startups. At the time, the pure ambition of giving his seed-stage investment fund that name sounded crazy (classic Dave!) and many questioned his plan to invest small amounts of capital in a massive number of startups. Read More

When it comes to cloud security these days, most enterprises are forced to choose between either making their data accessible, or making it secure. A company called Kryptnostic has technology that could enable them to retain control over their data with fully homomorphic encryption while also having the ability to search within it. Read More

We all know that fantasy sports is a huge and growing business. But when it comes to fantasy sports on mobile, most apps are just companion experiences used by fantasy sports players to track how their teams are doing. A new fantasy sports app called Draft hopes to change that, and has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding to do so.
Draft was founded by Jeremy Levine and Nicolo Giorgi, the… Read More

Following the close of its $85 million fourth fund last year, early-stage venture firm SoftTechVC is bringing on a new venture partner. With an eye on SaaS and enterprise investments, it’s hired Huddle co-founder Andy McLoughlin to join the team and invest in companies in that area.
McLoughlin brings with him a wealth of experience in technology, product, marketing and strategy from… Read More

Last August, Uber that would make it easier for third-party developers to hail a ride from within their own apps. In an effort to get more developers on board, the company has added the ability to add a request endpoint, and is running a virtual hackathon to surface new innovative ideas. Read More

FiftyThree has spent the last several years making products to increase creativity among users. Now the company has an eye on producing new tools not just for the consumer market, but that enterprise and education users could also leverage. To help with that, the company is also announcing that it has raised $30 million in new financing from New Enterprise Associates. Read More

Lyft should do more than $1 billion in gross revenues in 2015, but according to a forecast shared with potential investors, the company doesn’t expect to become profitable until 2016. This year Lyft is targeting nearly $1.2 billion in gross revenues, which it expects to grow to $2.6 billion in 2016. Read More